The Raven King
by Right What Is Wrong
Summary: The Three-Eyed Raven contemplates his ascension to the throne. Darkfic. Oneshot. Spoilers for Season 8/speculation on book ending.


**Author's Note: **Shamelessly plagiarized from / r / asoiaf theory discussions. A darker take on the ending. May require some book background on the identity of the Three-Eyed Crow/Raven.

* * *

There were worse prisons than a chair.

The King of Westeros sat by a window, his ravens cawing to him just outside, and paged through a book. The fat one had brought it to him at his request. As books went, it was a sordid, hysterical, miserable little propaganda piece masquerading as a historical work: _The Great Bastards Of Aegon V, With Particular Attention To Daemon Blackfyre And Brynden Rivers, Popularly Known As The Black Dragon And Lord Bloodraven. _

Detachment lent understanding. Where once he would have been indignant, he now found it only an interesting insight into how the weak-minded and ignorant viewed the world. He had learned well.

He had learned, in particular, never to befoul one's hands with the blood of one's kindred when one could have one's kindred do the work for one.

The gods cared not a whit for kinslayers, if the gods cared about anything at all, but men certainly did. Men made one's life most inconvenient. Therefore, appear innocent. Appear as a wounded lamb, while retaining the soul of a dragon.

Daenerys had reversed that order, appearing as a dragon with the soul of a wounded lamb. Folly on her part. She had died for it.

Her lover, the hidden prince, had been broken by his duty. He, too, had not deserved the throne. But he had accomplished the necessary tasks, as had been foreseen: he had ended the threat of the Others and left the road to the throne clear. Moreover, the circumstances leading to the boy's birth had unseated the weak and erratic Aerys - and what pathetic cattle the people of Westeros were. Drive a man to raving madness, and the people would still bend the knee to the murderous, shrieking lunatic for the sake of watery bloodlines and meaningless oaths. Nonetheless, the experiment had been necessary to justify his future actions - he needed to test the populace's potential for self-determination before accepting his duty and treating them as the livestock they were.

He had been honest with them. Despite the body, he was not really Bran. He was the Three-Eyed Raven.

He had always been the Three-Eyed Raven.

He tipped his head back, smiling, and stretched. Then he set his book aside and began to slowly wheel himself away from the window. He had work to do, and the histrionic rantings of Blackfyre-sympathizer "historians" about Brynden Rivers, Lord Bloodraven, hateful spymaster, blasphemous kinslayer, foul sorcerer with a thousand eyes and one, could wait until another time.

Westeros would have the king it deserved - a strong king, a wise king, a king who saw across his kingdoms and answered his people's every need. Perhaps not in the ways they liked, but answered nonetheless. A king eternal, a king invincible, a king who would not give his enemies peace, even in their own dreams.

Ah, the great folly of the wargs, who mourned that they could live a second life in their animals, but in time would die within them. That was because they had chosen animals. (And what consciousness had looked through the eyes of that final dragon, that had spared Daenerys's lover and burned only the throne whose pursuit had brought her so much sorrow and grief? And what did he care, so long as _that_ black dragon was determined to concern itself with anything but the hated and treacherous land of Westeros?) And their taboos, as always for lesser beings, were chosen out of hatred for their superiors: to never turn man-eater, to never couple in their new flesh, and never wear another man's skin. They were grand-sounding taboos, just as those that forbade brother to couple with sister.

But war was a worse cannibalism than any personal act, and all indulged in that aplenty. And he _would_ force this broken flesh to couple, if at all possible: death might claim this body, but so long as he always wore the skin of a skinchanger, there would always be another body ripe for the claiming. If the flesh proved impotent or infertile, well, well... the bastard of a new Aegon would sit the throne in time, even if the interregnum saw the realm burn. As for the final one...

How terribly, terribly silly were those who pitied him for being a cripple: even this damaged body, young and fresh, was better than one that was little better than a tree-bound corpse.

The Three-Eyed Raven smiled, and sent his vision spinning out through a thousand eyes: a vision that beheld the realm, _his_ realm, the realm for which he had worked so thanklessly for so long and now was his at last. He stretched his wings and flew, his screech of joy echoing throughout the infinity that was his and his alone.

And Bran the Broken screamed in a corner of his own mind.


End file.
